Luz de Luna

The self-taught Dona Micaela is a talented cook that likes a little experience. She may purée maiz criollo (heirloom corn) right into a creamy bright-yellow hummus, which she highlights with quelites oil, or serve weighty smoked eggplant with a dusky mole of chile chilhuacle and a plantain solution spiked with mezcal.

A long weekend lunch in the countryside is a hallowed tradition for homeowners of Oaxaca City, and Luz de Luna makes an optimal escape. Located in the town of San Andrés Huayapam regarding 20 minutes east of the city, this charming indoor-outdoor restaurant with views of Oaxacan foothills began life in 2012 as a standard comedor renowned for its passionate breakfasts. A few years earlier, though, its matriarch and cook, Micaela Ruiz Martinez, and her boy, Pavel Nieto, determined to get a little creative. “Now we are a town restaurant 2.0,” Nieto claims with a laugh.

Her finest meals typically take anthropological turns and feature Oaxaca’s edible insects. Dental braces on your own for a taco of avocado and deep-fried caterpillars called pochocuiles, or a pork shank braised in an abundant spicy sauce that obtains its unique fashionable umami from winged ants called hormigas. Desserts like panna cotta of tart Mixtec plums bring you back to the convenience area.

A great area to begin your long boozy lunch goes to bench where Nieto methods his inventive mixology. A mixed drink called Huayapan includes charred pineapple, Mixtecan juniper, and whiskey from the cult local brand Maiz Nation; one more concoction blends cranberry, ginger, and the outstanding mezcal produced by the proprietors. After a bar treat– a masa tetela, claim, loaded with a pesto of wild foraged eco-friendlies called quelites– transfer to the dining-room proper, enchanting with its straw baskets hanging above wood tables and vivid display screens of job by Oaxacan musicians.